It may sound like an episode of Orange is the New Black, but this is real life. A drone dropped a package of drugs onto the grounds of the Mansfield Correctional Institute in Ohio—a move which started a brawl between inmates and landed nine people in solitary last week.
The package contained a mix of drugs: 144.5 grams of tobacco, 64.5 grams of marijuana, and 6.6 grams of heroin, the Mansfield New Journal reports. Immediately after the delivery was made, a fight broke out on the recreation yard, and correctional officers broke up the fight using pepper spray. Over 200 inmates were later strip searched.
The delivery seemed to be intended for one specific inmate, according to prison officials who reviewed their surveillance camera footage. A spokeswoman from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction could not say whether the incident was gang-related or not.
"We have had other instances of unmanned aerial systems breaching security," she told the Mansfield News Journal. "The agency's top security adminstrators are taking a broad approach to increase awareness and detection of unmanned aerial systems."
Last year, the local branch of the Ohio Highway Patrol increased efforts to watch for "fence throws," or cases of outsiders throwing contraband over the fences that enclose the prison. That's probably the least of their worries now.
[via the Mansfield News Journal, Quartz]
